


Almost Ablaze

by carriecmoney



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Argentinian Marco, M/M, Skiing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-28
Updated: 2014-12-28
Packaged: 2018-03-04 01:56:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2905073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/carriecmoney/pseuds/carriecmoney
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On a blue and white day on the slopes of Lake Tahoe, Jean makes an encounter. 2014 JM secret santa entry.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Almost Ablaze

**Author's Note:**

> {A/N: Done for the 2014 jeanmarco secret santa for [winchester-rock](http://winchester-rock.tumblr.com)! They're Argentinian and I wanted to write about how much I hate snow/skiing so. Argentinian Marco helping Jean out of the snow.}

Jean had terrible, awful, horrible friends. Friends who pulled shit like kidnapping him from his house late in December and driving him four hours from San Jose to Lake Tahoe in his pajamas and shoved-on sneakers to spend a very long weekend learning how to snowboard. Armin’s grandfather was a long-standing member of the Tahoe ski patrol and kept a house there, which the Arlert family camped in during the season. Jean had been there once or twice in the summer to go hiking and shit when his _shitty_ friends decided to try and break his city boy ways, but the last time he’d been there in the snowtime was middle school. They were all in college now, but his friends were still juvenile as _The Sandlot_ , although at least they had the good graces not to curse in front of his mother as they frogmarched him out the door and into the Arlert’s old as fuck ski van.

It was three days of cold and frozen torture later, and Jean didn’t think his feet were ever going to recover from this melting-snow bullshit. The powder that had fallen on their first day here had hardened under the glare of a cold sun into ice and mush that hurt twice as hard to fall on. Armin was a skier, but Eren and Mikasa were boarders, so Jean was caught in a tug-of-war in the middle each morning as to which dangerous and slippery piece of plastic he’d careen down a mountain on today. New Year’s Eve, though, the boarder siblings won, and midmorning found Jean hopping in the lift line behind them as they bickered about… sibling stuff. Armin had abandoned them today, tired of having to fight the crowds and babysit Jean (although he didn’t phrase it exactly that way) and gone farther from the lodge to try the more complicated runs. Jean stuck to the easy, straightforward run with lots of people to pick him up when he fell, along with Eren and Mikasa, who had a strange habit of yelling conversation at each other while they boarded. Jean was too busy finding his balance to pay attention to them.

He hopped forward in line, one foot attached to his board and tripping up the other with every step. He glanced back – a group of attractive skiers talking too fast in Spanish for Californian Jean to catch glided in behind him like freaking ice skaters, the jerks. The guy closest to his age caught him staring and winked. Jean whipped around, face heating up the frigid air around his face.  

Eren and Mikasa barely noticed him as they kept squabbling (something about Mesopotamia? Whatever) on up into the ski lift chair. Leaving Jean to grab the next one – which he’d never done alone, and the Spanish-whatever skiers weren’t paying him the least attention. He hopped up on his own at the beckoning of the lift operator, snowboard swinging hard from his ankle as it lifted away. He clutched at the side bar of the chair and tried to breathe. With Armin sitting next to him and supplying the small talk, the lift had been easy, but alone, he felt nine years old on their family vacation to Colorado again. Small. And very, very high up.

He panicked his way right through the first drop, the only place he’d gotten off before, and kept right on climbing over Eren and Mikasa’s oblivious heads. He’d yell at them, but his throat had closed up over the first bank of fir trees – and he’d never be able to live it down anyway. So up the lift went. And up…

When the ground _finally_ rose back up to meet him, Jean shoved himself off and got a few slips away before he fell on his ass – and trying to stand up just made him fall on his fact. Snow is _cold_ when you don’t have goggles or a facemask.

The sound of skis skirted around him – a skid stop in front of him.  He looked up – he’d put on his goggles, but the red and white coat was the same as the winking Spanish guy. He held out a hand, voice muffled by his mask and the wind. Jean took it and let the skier haul him to his incompetent feet and guide him to a parking spot on a side snowbank before spinning around the corner of the drop zone and racing after his – family? Jean watched his red wink between the trees before he frowned at his board and tried to remember how to buckle this shit on right. This was about to be the worst half hour of his life.

In the three days he’d been trapped in either boarding or being bored at the Arlert’s shack, all that Jean seemed to have picked up was a tendency towards the left side of the runs. Flipping between two plastic sticks and one wasn’t helping his journey into competency, of course – he had to relearn his center of gravity every time he fell. Which was a lot. (Sometimes he fell just to break his momentum to keep from killing himself on a tree.) Snow was packed into every crevice of his clothing from the first time he _really_ fell, spinning out on the hard snow on his back. He was gonna beat the _shit_ out of Jaeger when he got to the bottom for dragging him out here in the first place, and give Armin and Mikasa some very nasty looks at least. He moaned onto the snow for a full exhale – it _hurt_ , fuck – before shoving himself back upright. He’d probably have an easier time climbing _up_ the damned mountain in his borrowed ski boots than doing this shit.

He was so concentrated on not running into trees or other people that he didn’t notice taking a fork in the run until he fell and no one was there to see it. His breath caught, but he _couldn’t_ panic. It was barely noon, and it wasn’t like this run was blocked off or anything. It had to lead somewhere. Right?

He kept on pushing, taking the hill in fifty-yard slips. He was hungry now, and his legs ached from _Tuesday’s_ runs. Breathing was hard this cold and this high up, and his damned helmet kept sliding around on his hat and trying to tear his ear off.

The run opened up into a wide table of flat, empty snow. Jean wasn’t going fast enough to get past it and petered out halfway down. He scooted forward a few times, but his patience had been shot with a semiautomatic back on the lift. He stilled, staring out over the blue, black, and white spectacle of Lake Tahoe and its robin’s egg sky, before groaning and falling back on the snow, softer in this spot. He stretched his arms out and stared blankly at the sky, so blue it hurt. He closed his eyes and breathed, counting to ten. His eyes stung from the icicle wind; he wiped at them with a sodden glove, just making it all worse. His breath was shaky; he trembled.

The whip of skis blowing by wafted over Jean, but he didn’t move. One peeled off from the group and stopped next to him. Something nudged his elbow.

“Are you dead?” Jean opened one eye – it was the red skier again, mask pulled down to show his mouth, but his polarized rainbow goggles blocked the top half of his face. The exposed mouth was smiling, corners tucked deep in his cheeks. Jean sighed and ground his eyes shut.

“No. Go away and let me suffer.”

Red Skier laughed, a deep chuckle that made Jean shudder. “There is no suffering on the slopes. Not like that.” He crouched down, lifting his goggles up on top of his metallic helmet so Jean could see his freckles, like ants on a hill. “Is everything all right?”

Jean swallowed, lips parting. “No. I’m not okay.” Jean glanced down the hill, where the last of the mystery skier’s family-group were weaving bright dots. “Don’t you need to keep up with your people?”

The skier shrugged. “They can live without me.” He narrowed his eyes at Jean before flopping down next to him, sticking his poles in the snow and peeling off his gloves (thick plastic-covered gauntlets). “Here. But I will want them back.” He held them out to Jean, who took them with numb fingers, staring. The skier sighed and shoved Jean’s wet cotton gloves inside them. “Do you want frost to bite your fingers, _boludo_?” Jean watched him tighten them around Jean’s wrists (the skier had dark purple liner gloves under them, almost the same color as Jean’s borrowed pants), then looked up into the stranger’s face.

“Why?”

“Because no one should look so wretched, when you are so alone up here.” He had the accent of whatever kind of Spanish they’d been chatting in in the lift line. How long ago was that? The stranger turned to look over the lake, reclining back on the snow next to Jean. “Plus, I like the view.” Jean nodded, staring at the heavy gloves in his lap.

They sat in easy silence, the skier humming and clicking his skis together as he watched a distant bird fly, faint smile lingering. The skier’s mild presence calmed Jean down, loosening the tight panic clutching at his bare throat. Jean coughed, rattling it out into the cold. The skier glanced over, bright colors and brown eyes. Jean clenched his fists inside his borrowed gloves. “Sorry.”

“It is okay. The skiing was _cho_ \- ah, crap, today, anyway.” He smiled at Jean, big and bright. Jean looked away again. “What are you doing so far up?”

“Missed m’drop.” He shucked the skier’s gloves to peel off his soaked ones and cram them in his (also borrowed) jacket pocket before shoving his red hands back in. “Panicked.”

The skier hummed. “First time on the lifts?” Jean looked down at him, who winked at him _again_. “We have all had our start somewhere, _benteveo._ ”

Jean rubbed at his neck – _cold fuck_ – dropped his hand. These gloves were as useful as oven mitts. “Yeah. I’ve never been in this much snow in my _life_ , but its either come out here or watch one of the four channels on the prosaic TV in the house-” He clammed up. “Sorry. I’m bitching. Sorry.”

The skier laughed, a mug of hot chocolate down Jean’s gullet. “Rough day?” Jean nodded. “Well, you are halfway down, if that makes you feel better.” Jean’s eyes went wide, staring at the skier.

“ _Only_ halfway?”

The skier threw his head back, laughing, helmet knocking the hard snow. Jean’s nostrils flared. The skier pushed himself to his elbows, eyes narrowed at Jean. “Well, you are not getting closer to the bottom by sitting here, you know. Come on, let’s get up, eh?”

Jean watched the skier stand like he’d been born with sticks strapped to his feet - which he might have been, for all Jean knew. “Who are you?”

The skier tilted his head at Jean, mouth parted in his slight smile. “Marco. But right now, I am just your guide.” He hauled Jean up by his elbows – he was taller and broader than Jean’d thought. Jean wobbled on his board, but Marco kept him steady with his elbow grip. Jean looked up at Marco’s oak eyes, so close – they were honey-flecked. Jean licked his chapped lips.

“I’m Jean, with an E-A.” Shut the fuck _up_ , Jean, he doesn’t care how you spell it-

Marco laughed, another shot of warmth into Jean’s belly. “Jean with an E-A, huh? All right, Jean with an E-A, let’s get you out of here and in front of a fire, eh?”

Jean moved to shake off Marco’s gloves. “You don’t have to do this, you know, I’ll be-”

“Yes. I do.” Marco’s eyes were hard slits for a moment before they softened with his smile. “Think of it as my good deed for the day, eh?” Jean held his gaze for a moment before ducking his head in a nod. Marco tightened the gloves around his hands, then tore off his own mask and velcroed it around Jean’s neck instead, patting his helmet when he was done. “You need these more than I do, _benteveo_.” Marco backed away, his easy comfort in sliding backwards making Jean’s breath catch in the new confines of Marco’s mask, still warm from his body. Marco readjusted his goggles over the top half of his face before yanking his poles from the snow and holding one out to Jean, point-first.

“Have you ever been towed by a skier before, Jean with an E-A?” Jean shook his head. Marco nodded. “Okay, just grab on, I bring you down to where you do not have to crawl to find speed.” Jean nodded and gripped the snow-caked end of Marco’s pole the best he could in his oven mitt-gloves, quads killing him. Marco nodded once and shoved backwards with his other pole – but Jean wasn’t ready and tipped forward, banging into Marco’s knees as he fell, Marco’s ski boots digging into his gut. Marco collapsed under him, breathless but laughing. Jean moaned and knocked his helmet against – shit.

“Well, that would be the first time to fall today.” Marco shoved himself onto his elbows, still laughing, while Jean burned and scrambled away, tangling up his snowboard in Marco’s skis. “Oh, hold still, is not _that_ bad!” He sat up and helped Jean to his hands and knees which just made it all _worse_ and Marco was still _laughing_. “You need to eat more, _benteveo_.”

“Don’t tell my mom that.” Jean flopped to the side, snowboard wheeling in the air. “I’m way too skinny for a good Jewish kid.” Marco laughed, straightening his coat and skis.

“You are a funny one, Jean with an E-A.” He swung up to his feet and knocked Jean around with a pole until Jean’s feet were facing downhill. “Ready to try again, eh?”

It took three more tries, but Marco got Jean past the flat zone. Jean waited for him to take off, but Marco wove slowly below him instead, calling out advice up the hill and keeping Jean from the trees and from the other infrequent passersby.

Jean probably cried when the run opened up to the bottom of the hill and the steam of the lodge, but his eyes had been tearing up from the wind for an hour now and he couldn’t tell the difference. Marco stuck close to his side as the ground leveled and the crowd thickened until Jean could struggle out of his board’s bindings. He crunched through the snow towards the nearest door, snowboard under his arm, while Marco skied circles around him, laughing like an asshole. Punk.

“Don’t you have somewhere else to be, jerk?” Jean bit out as he slammed his board into the snowbank along the wall of the lodge. Marco bent down and unclipped his skis in half the time it’d taken Jean to wrestle his board off and stuck them and his poles next to Jean’s board. He yanked his goggles down around his neck and smiled over them at Jean.

“You should not call people names who just saved you from frostbite, _benteveo_.”

Jean snorted. “Takes one to know one.”

Marco wrinkled his nose. “To answer your question, no, I have nowhere else to be. My cousins are living without me for a little while. Why, do you?”

“My asshole friends deserve to worry about me after all the shit they’ve put me through. C’mon, let’s go hide from them.”

Marco laughed and led the way into the lodge. “Gladly.”

Jean tried to buy the hot chocolate, but Marco insisted so pleasantly that he bent under pressure and waited on one of the three fireplaces’ hearths, wrestling his feet from the confines of his awful ski boots so his ankles could bend again, heart hammering in his itchy ears. Marco found him thawing out, half-asleep, next to the fire, and nudged his feet over so he could sit and hand over one of the paper cups of hot chocolate. “Thanks.”

“ _De nada_.” The hearth was wide enough that Marco could slide back and prop up next to Jean along the stone chimney, ski boots still knocking snow onto the hardwood. Their ski jackets scraped together at their shoulders. “So, Jean. If you hate snow so much, what are you doing here?”

Jean snorted into his hot chocolate, smiling for the first time that day. “My friends kidnapped me and made me come. Because they’re assholes.”

“And yet they are your friends?”

“They’re all I got.” Jean blew on his hot chocolate – still scalding. “And, like, they’re not assholes _all_ the time.” Marco hummed, watching Jean out of the corner of his eye over the rim of his cup. Jean coughed, a dry rattle. “Anyway, I’m sure whatever _your_ story is just blows my life out of the water.”

Marco smiled, eyes crinkling. “I am just a farm boy from Argentina, nothing special about me.” Jean leveled a glare at him, and Marco burst into laughter, curling in around his hot chocolate. “Okay, okay, so maybe the farm is worth a great deal of money. But I have a great deal of family to make up for it.”

“I saw.” Jean tried his hot chocolate again – still too hot, but almost bearable. “A regular wolf pack, aren’t ya?”

“You could say that. Hold this, please?” He handed Jean his hot chocolate so he could shrug out of his coat and lay it over his lap, straightening the tight black turtleneck underneath. Jean bit his cheek. Marco readjusted his seat and collected his cup back from Jean’s numb fingers – his sleeves ended in thumb holes, which would be dorky if the arms above them weren’t so damn _nice_. Jean kept his skinny math nerd shoulders hunched in his jacket. “What about you? Do you have a _benteveo_ flock of your own?”

Jean blinked at him a few times. “Wait – is that a bird? Have you been calling me a _bird_ this whole time?” Marco grinned and winked. Jean groaned and shoved Marco’s gut with his elbow. “Jerk.”

“Takes one to get one.” Marco smiled, and Jean couldn’t hold back his own in return. Marco was an infection. “Where are you from, then, little bird?”

They chatted through another round of hot chocolate on the hearth, Jean thawing out from the fire and Marco’s laughter until his body had turned into chicken soup contained by his skin. Mikasa found them there at some point, boiling over Jean’s disappearance in that underground simmer of hers. He felt kinda bad for making her worry like that, but they were the ones who’d forgotten about _him_ , so. Not that bad. Besides, Marco charmed her with his stories of Jean’s ineptitude until she was _smiling_ at him. He was some kind of wonderful, for sure.

When he asked them if they were coming to the lodge’s New Year’s Eve party that night, Jean whipped to Mikasa sitting by his feet, eyes wide. They hadn’t planned on it – Eren had swiped some champagne from his parents’ the-kids-are-away party planning before they left, and they were gonna split that on the floor of Armin’s house, but-

She barely smiled at Jean. “Most likely.” He was gonna kiss her on the _nose_. “I’ll have to check with the others, of course, but I think we can make it.”

Marco smiled, a slow glow. “Wonderful.” He glanced across the room. “Oh, my family has arrived. I should get to them. It was very nice to meet you both.” He stood and bent to kiss Mikasa’s cheek – _Jean’s_ – walked right off. Jean’s mouth hung open, face burning. Mikasa raised an eyebrow at him.

“So we’re coming back for the party?”

“If I have to fuckin’ _walk_ here. In skis.”

* * *

Eren and Armin bailed on them, Eren because he was sick of people, Armin because Eren bailed and he’d spent too much time separated from his hip. Now _there_ was a drama just waiting to happen. Jean could only hope he was a few states away when it blew up.

Mikasa helped Jean dig through the assorted left-behind clothes from the Arlerts for something that fit him and could be construed as ‘fancy’. The Arlerts were a family of hobbits, so all of the pants were too short, but Mikasa found a sewing kit in the guest bathroom and let out the hems of a pair of black slacks because she was an angel in eyeliner and combat boots.  

They left the lame kids behind at about ten-thirty Mikasa driving the mammoth van the short distance to the lodge in silence. The silence was Jean’s favorite and least favorite part of Mikasa. She looked nice, though.

Marco’s family was hard to miss, a nucleus of loud Spanish and people so pretty they shone. Marco saw them (he was _looking_ for them) and lit up, waving them over into the circle. He kissed their cheeks again, a brush of skin against Jean’s temple, then introduced them in a flurry of words probably not in English. His family cheered and welcomed them in, dragging Mikasa into an open spot on the couch they’d claimed and left Jean to perch on the arm by Marco. Mikasa melted right into the family, her sparkly green dress garnering compliments from all the women and her conversational Spanish drawing laughs from them all. Marco leant into Jean’s side, fingers curling under and around his elbow. “Your – friend, she looks very nice.”

“Yeah, she cleans up pretty well.” Jean glanced down and caught Marco’s raised eyebrow. “What?”

“Just a friend, eh?”

“What?” Jean blinked. “Oh, yeah, _duh_ , Miks is _way_ too killer for me. I’m an accounting major, not a rock star.”

Marco’s eyes narrowed. “Do not sell yourself so under.” Jean huffed.

“I could really use a drink right about now.” Marco smiled and Jean could feel his breath on his bare forearm (he’d rolled up his sleeves to hide that they were too short).

“You have the right idea.” He stood and caught Jean’s waist in one motion, guiding him to his feet before slipping away to a hand on his back, making his Spanish excuses while he guided them to the open bar. Jean was too speechless to protest – what gave him the _right_ to be this much of a smooth bastard?

Jean was going to get champagne to fit the occasion, but when Marco bumped into him as they walked and trailed fingers over the spot of skin showing below the hem of his too-small shirt, he ordered whiskey and shot it down, then tapped for another one. The too-tall bartender raised his eyebrow, but complied after sliding over Marco’s more fitting champagne. Marco laughed and pulled Jean away from the bar and into a slot between an unoccupied table and a pole by the bank of windows. The party was on the third story of the lodge, so it was almost possible to ignore the churned base of the hill and only look at the sliced-out runs on the mountain, criss-crossed white ribbons on a spotted quilt. Jean pressed his shoulder to the frigid glass, sipping on his second glass of burning liquid. Marco leant as well, facing him.

“You are nervous.”

“No shit, dude, you’re, like, twenty thousand leagues out of my league.” Jean stared into his ice cubes. “Why’re you still talkin’ to me, man?”

“You only think that because I am rich and have an accent.” He bent in, a loose hair from his gelled-back style flopping onto his forehead. “But I am not that rich, and I have trouble saying the word ‘naturally’.” Jean snorted – it did come out more as a slurry that started with ‘nat’ than any English. “But you…” Jean looked up into Marco’s oak barrel eyes. “You have such wings in you, _benteveo_. I would love to see you fly.”

Jean lips parted, face hot. “Oh.”

Marco watched him over the lip of his champagne flute as he drained it. Jean tossed back the last of his whiskey and thumped the glass on the table just as Marco set his flute down with barely a click on the wood. The party was drunk and swinging all along the mezzanine, and no one would noticed two kids backed up against a wooden pole by the black window.

Marco took a step out of the light and into Jean’s space, wood eyes fixed. Jean’s mouth twitched. “You know, it’s not midnight yet.”

“It is in my country.” And Marco bent in and kissed him, soft and bubbling, hand cupping his cheek. Jean sighed and latched his fingers in Marco’s gelled hair. Marco tilted his head to pry open Jean’s mouth and press in harder, heavy hands falling to Jean’s waist. Jean’s back hit the pole as he melted into it, back arching.

Jean wrenched himself away, breath strung over into Marco’s teeth. “Holy shit. You’re good at that.” Marco smiled and kissed him again, tracing circles into Jean’s hips and making Jean’s head spin.

When they broke away again, a slow withdrawal, Jean’s fingers were laced together behind Marco’s neck. He panted as he rubbed his thumbs into the corner of Marco’s jaw, watching his eyes slide closed on a smile. “When do you guys go back to Argentina?”

Marco hummed. “The flight is day after next, so we drive back to Sacramento tomorrow.” He slit his eyes open, smile curling. “So let’s make it a night to remember, eh?”

Jean swallowed and nodded.

* * *

Jean had breakfast with Marco’s family and waved them off in their caravan (even an Astrovan didn’t hold all of them), getting one last kiss in a corner from Marco, coffee and oranges. Mikasa was the best wingman a guy could ask for and asked no questions when she picked him up soon after and took him back home, letting him stare out over the lake in silence.

A few days later, when Jean and his friends finally dragged their asses back to civilization and he checked his facebook, he had a friend request from a Marco Bodt. He smiled as he accepted, then went into the kitchen to make hot chocolate.

 


End file.
